No.031 - An interview with research fellows visiting NIHU – PhD candidate Hannah Bayley

Hannah, what are your research interests and what projects you are working on now?

My research interests include screen music and sound, Japanese horror cinema, Japanese culture, adaptation and appropriation theory, and film remakes. I am currently writing up my PhD which offers a reconceptualization of the roles of sound and music in Japanese ‘ghost’ cinema, also known as shinrei-mono eiga, and how that differs from other traditions elsewhere in the world, especially considering the number of American film remakes that have emerged.

How did you become interested in your research field?

During the final year of my Dual Honours undergraduate degree in Music and English, I undertook the Shakespeare into Film module and discovered Japanese film adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies. My English Literature dissertation presented an examination of music in international adaptations of Shakespeare, which included Satō Masaru’s score for Kurosawa Akira’s Kumonosu-jō (Throne of Blood) and Takemitsu Tōru’s score for Ran.

Following on from this early research, my academic interest in Japanese film music moved into a more contemporary realm and my research for my Masters degree compared music and sound in Ringu and its American remake. With a large amount of existing scholarship analysing visual representations in Japanese horror cinema, my interest lay around the analysis of sonic practice in a number of these films and how music and sound could heighten culturally specific representations of ghostly presentation. This was what led me to pursue doctoral research.

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years? 10 years?

I see myself continuing to teach in the Higher Education setting, and I would like to have undertaken further fellowship opportunities in order to realise a number of research projects I have in mind, inspired by my time on the IPS fellowship. I would like to have published a book collection collaborating with other scholars working in the area of contemporary Japanese film music.

What was your most memorable moment during your IPS fellowship in Japan?

Thanks to the support of staff at Nichibunken, my host supervisor, Professor Hosokawa Shuhei, and a researcher friend from Kyoto University who helped me arrange a interpreter, the most memorable moment of my IPS fellowship was getting to interview three prominent film and video game composers; Shimizu Hitomi, Kawai Kenji and Ashiya Gary. It was fascinating hearing about their compositional processes, and collaborations with other industry colleagues.

What is your advice for students or early career researchers considering to do research in a different country or culture?

Do not let language barriers put you off, there will always be support from staff and colleagues. I managed to pick up functional Japanese through immersion in a variety of research opportunities, although it also helped having a certificate in language competency.

I would also recommend that students or early career researchers contact the institute at which they are considering undertaking a research project to find out what language support provision they have available. Once there I recommend keeping a research diary. I came back to my home institute with a suitcase full of resources. I even shipped home a couple of boxes!

The cataloguing took me a while to complete after my placement. However, it also served as a reminder of how being able to examine culturally specific traditions of ghostly and horrific representations in the Japanese arts in the ‘field’ has enriched my understanding of how they have shaped examples of sonic practice in Japanese film.

PhD candidate Hannah Bayley
Hannah Bayley is currently writing up her PhD in Music and Film Studies at Keele University. Hannah’s research is supervised by Professor Nicholas Reyland, Dr. Neil Archer and Professor Alastair Williams, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. In October 2014 Hannah undertook a five-month fellowship, funded by the AHRC, at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (one of the six member institutes of NIHU) in Kyoto. Hannah currently has an article under review titled Sound and Techno-Horror: Kairo and Pulse.

In her free time Hannah enjoys researching about the Way of Tea (Chadō, Sadō or Chanoyu, literally “Hot Water for Tea”), following participation in a matcha tea ceremony in Japan, going to the cinema, and teaching piano.

Twitter: @bayleyhn